Ron Paul: North Korea is not a threat to the US

Ron Paul: This weekend the big news was that the North Koreans shot off a rocket. They claimed they were making an attempt to put a satellite in orbit, which they have a right to do under international law.

Space is supposed to be open to all those individuals who want to use it. Of course, the West, including our government – or especially our government – reacted almost in a hysterical fashion.

They called for an emergency UN meeting and this meeting of the UN met and they are trying to decide now what to do about the North Koreans.

Here it is: The North Koreans, they have a rocket, not an intercontinental ballistic missile. We don’t even know for sure if they have a bomb that they could launch, and we are now wondering, what are we going to do with this country?

I mean, they can’t even feed themselves. They do not have a Navy, what kind of an Air Force do they have, and yet it just seems like this is an excuse for the West, and in particular our military-industrial complex to have another excuse to have a massive build up.

It just seems so unnecessary. Ironically, it seems like the Chinese had the most measured response as they, “why don’t you just sit back a minute and think about this?” And I think that is what we ought to do.

The Koreans are not going to attack us. If they even did have a bomb, even if they made an attempt to do it, I mean, they would be wiped off on the face of the Earth within minutes.

It is just preposterous to think that the North Koreans are a threat. I think they are playing cat and mouse. I think they are laughing. I think they love to see us go nuts over this, but what they don’t understand is, they might not realize how much we might overreact, and this whole thing that some of our politicians are saying, “Well, we should have gone in there and bombed that site before the rocket even took off.”

But the technology there is so primitive and yet we are at this point of thinking that it is like Pearl Harbor again. Just think, we are concentrating on weapons and weapons are really important.

But what if we said for many years, “It is not the guns that kill, it is the people that kill.” And yet, we have politicians now claiming that we should practically go to war against North Korea at this moment.

Quite frankly, I think if we would not be in South Korea, which I have advocated for years, South Korea and North Korea probably would be unified and they would be westernized by now. But this whole idea that we are there and we persists with this confrontation…

Communism is a failure, and that is why the Soviet system collapsed. But when you play these games, just like we did with the communists in Cuba. Castro lasted a lot longer because we put sanctions on them, on Castro, and gave him cover, but that is going to come to an end eventually. After all these years, sanctions don’t work.

People are now crying for even more and more sanctions. So it just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever for us to pursue these policies of antagonism. You say these people are a bit nuts. Well, if they don’t want to talk to us, fine. But if they would talk to us, I would not give them any money. So often when we talk to the North Koreans, we think they are going to do something, we give them money.

Why don’t we try this third option? Instead of either attacking people or giving them money, just offer out friendship. If they want to trade with us, fine. But communism fails, it will fail, their system is failing. The Soviet system, we didn’t have to attack it. They had thousands and thousands of nuclear weapons, and we didn’t have to confront them.

And now, we are acting hysterically over this whole notion that we have to attack them. Sure, they might be working on a weapon, but just think in the age in which we live. People need to understand and study what fourth generation warfare is.

They need to understand that we were really brought down and chaos was caused by 19 individuals with boxed blades. That is what we have to think about, but we have to understand fourth generation warfare. You have to understand why people want to attack us. You have to understand why we do these things and how fruitless they are.

We have to realize that our foreign policy has blowback to it and that is the biggest threat to us. The best thing that we could do is to take the advice of the founding fathers and say, “Look, let’s trade with people. Let’s talk with people, try to be friends with people, and be more tolerant with people, and look to our own problems.”

When we make our own mistakes, if we have imperfections in protecting human rights and civil liberties here in this country, let’s take care of it before we preach and lecture to everybody else and expect them to respond to us.

If we do that, I think we could come up with a much better chance of having peace in this world and certainly a lot more prosperity. We don’t need to be spending these hundreds of billions of dollars on international warfareism.

And some people expected our new administration to actually cut it back. They are increasing this military budget, and if you would have just listened to the comments from our administration today, they were more provocative than anything I have heard in weeks, if not months about what we must do about this.

We ought to just sit back and take a breath and realize that North Korea is not a threat to the United States of America.

"And now, we are acting hysterically over this whole notion that we have to attack them."

Sometimes RP seems to blow things out of proportion seemingly to create a black/white argument to which it is easier to seem to be the sole owner of 'sanity'.

I mean certainly there is attention being paid to the situation in N. Korea, but in briefly surveying major news sources I would completely disagree with the notion that 'we' are acting 'hysterically', which means the concomitant generalized rebuke is also a bit hysterical in it's own right...

"We ought to just sit back and take a breath and realize that North Korea is not a threat to the United States of America."

That's right. It's only a threat to Japan, South Korea, and if China gets involved, Taiwan, and many of the SE Asian countries. They're still half-a-world away and barely the size of a few U.S. states put together. No one's irrational enough to provoke a war, right? That'd be silly. I'm sure all nuclear weapon testing ceased since the Cold War, who doesn't want to live in peace and harmony?

Human nature isn't always predictable when advocating friendship. When you extend an open hand to others; some will ignore it, others will take advantage of the fact that you are now in an open position and can't defend yourself from their attack, and a few will think you are about to slap them.

Read Mahatma Gandhi. In New India he talked about the occasional need for violence. In an article about people who used non-violence to mask cowardliness, he said it was worse to be a coward than to be violent. To keep it in context, he also said non-violence was much better than violence but if you were to weak to respond with non-violence then don't be a coward.

Judging from the size of Kim's ego in public, he is probably just like Sadam and is overstating his position. We should use caution so we don't end-up in another Iraq war.

The African proverb Teddy Roosevelt used said it well: "Speak softly and carry a big stick". The difference is that while TR was reacting to South American nations defaulting on their financial agreements, we are confronted with a nation that defaulted on their diplomatic agreements 6 years ago. I seem to remember many apologists saying their nuclear capabilities didn't matter since they didn't have the technology to deliver a warhead.

The idea that we must wait for the other to attack before we respond is no longer viable. Since an offensive attack can be delivered from afar, a defensive reaction must happen sooner than before.

My understanding is that the states came together to provide a way to respond to common issues like National defense.

As much as I agree with your point of view on North Korea, I cannot disagree more with this statement: "Communism is a failure, and that is why the Soviet system collapsed."

Don't be tempted to confuse USSR with communism - it had almost nothing related. USSR failed because it was NOT a communist state - in fact, it was an autocratic dictatorship, no matter how it called itself. North Korea is about the same - it is autocratic dictatorship, and NOT a de facto communist state (though it calls itself one). At the moment there is no country in the world, that is "communist" per se, only few, that are labelling themselves as such. Few, that could be considered "really" communist are Brunei Sultanate and Scandinavian countries.

Dr. Paul, know that if you get to the ballot in 2012, you have my vote. It is not that I agree with you on every policy, but just that I disagree with you less than with any other candidate I hear. Funny how that has become the choice left to most Americans.
You refer to North Korea and rightfully put it's significance in the real light of day. How is this any different than any other diversionary finger pointing that the government/media have always used to control the minds of the citizenry of this nation? It has been smoke and mirrors all along. Until we can light up the entire system, unveil the corruption in our own government and industry, we as citizens are doomed to a continued campaign of misinformation, misdirection, and other means of distractions from the truth.
I thank you, Sir, for your efforts to awaken the American people to the truth, but fear that most of the citizens seem to actually believe what they read in the papers, or see on television. It is further complicated by how we are allowed to register a vote, here in Texas, all it required was to show a drivers license, and while in line, I could overhear the constant murmur of spanish.
Take from this what you will, but I for one do not think Obama was legitimately elected in November. I fear that the USA is now an Obama-nation still headed full speed down those same railroad tracks that got us here in the first place, and I hope those who voted for our current president live to rue their vote but I fear, they will only find someones else to blame.

North Korea is just a surrogate. The real issue is China. Soon they will be powerful enough to take Taiwan without firing a shot. Now that F-22 is cancelled, we can spend another decade or so throwing money down the F-35 development rat hole. Once that ends up costing $100M or so per airplane (vs $35M for an F-16), then we will be promised more pie-in-the-sky with the next airplane that will take 20+ years to develop. More welfare for the wealthy.

Funny how everyone is up in arms about the big-shots at AIG getting big taxpayer bonuses, but no one bats an eye when the same thing happens at Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman. They don't have a single weapon system that's on budget or schedule, yet their CEOs make huge 100% US taxpayer funded salaries. Ho hum.

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